The present invention relates generally to the field of network design, and more specifically to optimizing connections between a set of resources.
In intelligence analysis, resource analysis, traffic management, logistics, and many other network related areas of analysis, it is common to connect a set of resources, or terminals, in an “optimal” way. This is typically achieved by evaluating a minimal Steiner tree on the network, which is the shortest possible tree on the network which connects the terminals of interest. In some cases, algorithms used to evaluate the minimal Steiner tree are heuristic algorithms coupled with pre-processing and branching techniques.